My family, friends, and I spent this spring break in Portugal. How is this relevant to my blog? Well, maybe at first glance, it’s not really relevant. But as I learned from reading in another class, tourism is, in fact, more about sharing than deeper inner change. Even if I don’t necessarily agree, in “The Case Against Travel” – Agnes Callard makes a bold argument that tourism is often more about external performance. She argues that tourists only care about collecting stories that they can later share with friends – not actually experiencing anything new. This concept of sharing and waiting for appreciation from others is essential to the author.
What if I told you that the relevance of the first sentence is direct? Alongside thousands of different post-break posts from my fellow Tufts students – it is an example of normative social influence. Normative social influence occurs when the influence of other people leads us to conform in order to be liked and accepted.
I think the reference to Jonah Berger in our textbook is awesome. We read his book Contagious for one of my other classes – and his method of STEPPS (social currency, triggers, emotion, public, practical value, and stories) is essential to understanding what goes viral and why.
I want to specifically mention social currency in this context. Social currency is the first component of the STEPPS model. It’s the reason behind why you want to share something. In our case – traveling – it’s so cool to go travel, meet new people, experience new things. What could be better? The only thing better is sharing it with your friends. It makes you feel accepted. It’s considered cool by society to travel.
Another example I want to include here is the computer game FIFA – now FC after rebranding. It’s all about competition. When you win a match, you share that with your friends. It’s not just about how you’re doing, but how you’re doing compared to others. Wins make you feel good. Telling people about those wins makes you feel accepted by society.
But same as my disagreement with Callard, I don’t really agree with the point that all of this is just about sharing. I believe that traveling also brings very deep change. And the posts we share bring in stories and the genuine will to preserve them.
